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Recently I have once more been engaged in lively discussions on Usenet concerning King Arthur. I have been defending, as best I can, my co-authors of The Holy Kingdom Alan Wilson and Baram Blackett, from a barrage of attacks from other Arthurian researchers intent on discrediting their work. Many of these attacks have been personal, the motive for these presumably being that if Wilson and Blackett can be discredited, then their work need not be taken seriously. Because I have defended them I have myself been called a "moron" and a "village idiot". Fortunately I do not take these insults very seriously, realising that such name-calling implies that our opponents have run out of sensible arguments. However, there are larger issues than this at stake and it is to these I would now like to draw attention.
Back in 1993 Robert Bauval and I were engaged on writing The Orion Mystery when, in a sale, he came across a remaindered copy of Piazzi Smythe's classic: "The Great Pyramid". Though this work, which concerns the discredited "science" of Pyramidology, was not relevant to our own work, he nonetheless bought the book as an antiquarian curio. Then, while flipping through it a few days later, by chance he came across something rather important: mention of some curious relics that had been found in the Great Pyramid during the Victorian era.
How Piazzi Smythe, then the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, came to be writing about these relics is itself strange and deserves repeating. The story goes that in 1872 a British engineer called Waynman Dixon was employed in Egypt to build a bridge over the Nile at Cairo. During his free time, having few other distractions to occupy him, he decided to do a little amateur, archaeological research on the Great Pyramid. With a friend called Dr. Grant and his carpenter "man-of-all-work", Bill Grundy, he made a thorough examination of the Queen's Chamber. Theorizing that this chamber, like the King's above it, may have had ventilation shafts built into its walls, they tapped these with a hammer until they found two places which sounded hollow. Further investigation with hammer and chisel revealed two channels, one on each side of the room, very similar to those already known about in the King's Chamber.
What was of great interest to us was Smythe's report that in one of these shafts Dixon found "a little bronze grapnel hook; a portion of cedar-like wood, which might have been its handle; and a gre-granite, or green-stone ball, which, from its weight, 8,325 grains, as weighed by me [Piazzi Smythe] in November, 1872, must evidently have been one of he profane Egyptian mina weight balls, long since valued by Sir Gardner Wilkinson at 8,304 grains."[The Great Pyramid, Charles Piazzi Smythe, p. 429, Grammercy Books, New York]
We were, of course, anxious to see these relics — the only such objects ever to have been reported found in the Great Pyramid — but at the time this report, contained in Smythe's book, was all that we had to go on. Not unreasonably Robert suspected that if they were to be found anywhere then they would probably be in the department of Egyptology at the the British Museum. However enquiries there produced a blank; we were told no one there had ever heard of any such relics. Fortunately, through an astronomer friend, Robert was put in touch with Dr Mary Brück, wife of the current Astronomer Royal for Scotland, Professor Herman Brück. As it turned out she had recently written a biography of Piazzi Smythe and was therefore in possession of his diaries and other papers. Amongst his letters she found details of his correspondence with John Dixon, Waynman's brother. It turned out that he had brought the relics back to Britain and had shown them to Smythe. They were kept in a cigar box. Smythe had returned them, still inside their cigar box. Later they had been offered for sale to the British Museum but the Trustees had refused to pay for them and they remained in the possession of the Dixons.
It turned out that an article about this important discovery had been published on 7th December 1872, with diagrams, in an old magazine called The Graphic. Armed with this information, Robert went back to the British Museum, who still denied any knowledge of the relics. Undaunted he gave an interview on the subject of the Dixon relics to The Independent, arguing that if they weren't to be found in the British Museum, then it was quite likely they had been buried under the plinth of Cleopatra's Needle. His reason for suggesting this was that this monument had been erected on the north bank of the Thames by the Dixon brothers and it is a matter of record that, amongst other things, a "box of cigars" had been placed under it inside a time capsule.
Publication of this story flushed out the truth concerning the subsequent history of the Dixon relics. Robert was contacted by a Mrs Porteous, a great-grandaughter of one of the Dixon brothers, who revealed that she herself had actually given the relics to the British Museum in 1970. Faced with this evidence, the now red-faced Egyptologists had to go back through their records and eventually discovered that yes, the relics had been deposited there in 1970. Not only that but the records showed that Dr I.E.S. Edwards, the then Keeper of Egyptian Antiquities, had himself registered them. It was unfortunte that Dr Edwards, long since retired but a friend of Robert's, had forgotten all about this incident. Following their registration they had been put at the back of a cupboard and nobody either knew they were there or had thought to look for them since.
I tell this story as a cautionary tale as, alas, it does not have an entirely happy ending. The "grapnel hook" and "granite ball" are now on display in a glass cabinet on the second floor of the British Museum along with a facing stone from the Great Pyramid. What is missing is the "portion of cedar-like wood" which Smythe thought to be the handle of the "grapnel hook" but which John Dixon refers to in his letters as part of a cubit. This piece of wood does not seem to have been part of Mrs Porteous' bequest and one must assume that it, being considered of little value in comparison with the other relics, has been lost during the course of the century between their discovery and their final handing over to the British Museum. This is particularly unfortunate for, unknown to the Dixon brothers, this would in fact have been the most important relic of all. If we had it in our possession today then we could, using Carbon dating techniques, find out exactly when the tree it was taken from died. As it is certain that it was put inside the Queen's Chamber shaft at the time the pyramid was built, this would give us a reasonably accurate date, independent of other considerations, for the building of the Great Pyramid. As it is the short-sightedness of the 19th Century Trustees, who refused to pay a few pounds for what they considered trinkets of little value, means that we are now denied that possibility.
I mention this story because in many ways it parallels what has happened to the extraordinary discoveries of Alan Wilson and Baram Blackett. In 1990 permission was obtained for an archaeological dig to be made at the Church of St Peters super Montem on Mynydd-y-gaer, to the North of Bridgend in Glamorgan. They had already bought this ruined church from the Commissioners of the Church of England in Wales and the dig was carried out in a professional way under the direction of Dr Eric Talbot of Glasgow University — a senior field-archaeologist. The purpose of the dig was to establish whether, as they believed, this church foundation went back to the second century AD (the time of the legendary King Lucius or Lleirwg) or if, as was claimed by the Welsh Monuments Commission, it was founded no earlier than the thirteenth century.
The dig was a resounding success revealing a sequence of church building on the same site. The earliest of these was dated to possibly even earlier than the second century. This church had been burnt down, probably during a Saxon raid, and a "bee-hive" structure hastily built to replace it. This was typical in style of what should be called a Welsh hermitage and probably dated to around 500 AD. An even more exciting discovery was still to come, For buried at the very centre of this structure was found a cross made of electrum. This had an inscripition in Latin: "PRO ANIMA ARTORIUS", which though ungrammatical can easily be translated as meaning "For the soul of Arthur".
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This was not all that was found at the church. Prior to the dig Alan and Baram had found a memomorial stone, also with a rough Latin inscription, which reads: REX ARTORIUS FILI MAURICIUS.
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Now we know from abundant historical sources (such as the Llandaff Charters) that there was a Sixth century king of Glamorgan called in Welsh "Athrwys" (or "Atroys"), who was the son of King Meurig or "Mauricius". there are many indications to suggest that this Athrwys is none other than "Rex Artorius" the "King Arthur" of legend whose name is recorded on the electrum cross. If this is so then both this humble slab of stone with its rough inscription and the electrum cross found in the centre of a contemporaneous church are of huge cultural and historical importance. Yet, just as with the case of the Dixon relics from the Great Pyramid, to date the reaction of the academic community has been almost universally hostile. A wall of silence has decended over the issue, no one willing to publicly endorse that such important discoveries were made by amateurs such as Wilson and Blackett.
This would be laughable were it not that this professional disdain could have serious consequences for the survival of these relics. Though presently safe in the custody of Wilson and Blackett, what will be their fate after they have departed this world? Where will they be in 100 years time? Will they then belong to another "Mrs Porteous" willing for free to give them to the British Museum or will they end up in a private collection never to be seen again?
And what of the science that could and should be done on these objects? Will this too have to wait a hundred years until those whose egos seem so bruised by the discovery of King Arthur relics in Wales have themselves been safely underground for half a century? These are important issues and need to be addressed today. I would urge everyone who reads this letter to write to Rhodri Morgan, First Minister of the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff to express their concern that these priceless pieces of Welsh heritage be given a proper home forthwith. They should be the centre-pieces of a room in Cardiff Museum given over to King Arthur, King of Glamorgan and Pendragon of all Britain!
Copyright © 2000 Adrian G Gilbert